Two Cities, One Train
Every Friday at 6:40 p.m., Mei stood on the same stretch of platform in Hangzhou, watching the doors slide open, looking for an orange jacket. Chen took the 4:12 out of Shanghai, the one that stopped at every town worth naming, and arrived with a weekend bag and the tired, slightly crooked smile she had learned to read from fifty metres away.
For two years that was their rehearsal for marriage. Sunday nights were the worst. They had a rule — no crying at the station, wait until the train pulls out — which they broke almost every time.
The hard part was not the distance. It was the ordinary. Mei once burst into tears not because she missed him, but because she had bought two cartons of milk and could not remember which one was his. Chen kept a list of everything he wanted to show her and forgot half of it by Friday.
What saved them was small and stubborn. A phone left on the kitchen counter, video call running, so they could eat dinner together in silence. A shared calendar with nothing on it but their two names. A cheap postcard mailed every month, always arriving late, always carrying the same three words and a joke.
On the last Sunday before Chen's transfer came through, they stood at the station as usual. The doors opened, and he did not get on. 'Aren't you going back?' Mei asked. He shook his head, reached into his bag, and pulled out a set of keys. 'There is no back,' he said. 'Only here.'
They live ten minutes from that platform now, in a flat with one milk carton in the fridge and no countdown on the calendar.
